


This Is Home | 180924

by PetitSkittles



Series: Happy Birthdays [1]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Angst, Cuddles, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Trans Male Character, Trans Wen Jun hui | Jun, Transphobia, happy birthday tio!, mingyu is The Supportive Friend junnie deserves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-15 15:13:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16065773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PetitSkittles/pseuds/PetitSkittles
Summary: Junmei is a girl, Junhui is a boy. Junmei doesn't exist anymore (maybe she never existed after all).No one seems to (want to) understand, except for Mingyu.





	1. junhui

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snowpatrol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowpatrol/gifts).



> doing it from junhui's point of view made this os about him more than about jungyu... sorry tio (￣ー￣;)ゞ
> 
> i'll add a chapter from mingyu's point of view if you liked this one! it's the 23rd here, so if i post it tomorrow, it'll still be your birthday gift (*ゝω・)ﾉ
> 
> (sorry if i get anything wrong, i wrote it based on what i feel, but i'm agender/genderfluid so i could be wrong... please don't get mad if i say anything that makes me sound ignorant or rude! also, i'm in a homophobic, racist, close-minded village. this isn't every trans person's life, i know some friends from other places who told their friends, family, classmates and such they were trans and everyone was happy for them uwu)

When Junmei looks in the mirror, she doesn’t see himself. Her reflection is weird, it’s as if her mirror is showing her someone else. Her mother doesn’t know what to say when her daughter comes to her to talk about that strange feeling.

         Her parents buy her a new dress – with unicorns and glitter – and seem relieved when she smiles and wears it at least twice a week.

 

Two years later, she hears about people born in the wrong body. That can’t be her problem. She’s weird, but she likes pink, fairies and unicorns. That’s girly, so she’s a girl inside and out. Mingyu, her new friend, frowns when she says that.

         “I like pink too. I’m not a girl…”

         The tiny girl shrugs.

         “Maybe you’re a girl in a boy body.”

         “No? I don’t think so? I just like pink. It’s just a colour, it doesn’t mean anything…”

         Boys liking pink isn’t normal, that’s what her parents said when they saw Mingyu’s pink shoes (that was the first and last time he wore them in her house). Pink is for girls.

 

Pink isn’t for girls. Pink is for Junmei too, and she isn’t a girl.

         She’s fourteen now and she stopped giving a fuck about gender roles and stereotypes. So what if she likes pink and unicorns? It doesn’t help her feel better when people call her by her name or use female pronouns. Even in her head, she still uses “she”. She’s not ready to tell anyone about her difference (so scared, so afraid). The pronoun isn’t the right one, it’s not Junmei – not that the name is hers anyway – but she decides that she’ll only use something else once she’ll be strong enough to talk about _it_ to someone (because maybe she's just confused, maybe it's just because she's a teenager). She plans to tell her parents soon. For now, she’ll look at the mirror and try not to cry at her pretty face that could be made of porcelain.

         That’s kind of how she feels. A porcelain doll forever showing a fake smile, pretty and ready to break at the tiniest hit.

 

Junmei just blew up her seventeen candles and she’s alone with Mingyu, her parents spending the night somewhere else so she can have a movie night with her best friend. She’s pretty sure they think they’re gonna kiss or something, but they’re wrong. Despite her difference, she likes boys. That didn’t change.

         “Gyu? I’m a boy.”

         Mingyu is the first one to know about _it_.

         “So am I. Give me the popcorn.”

         That night, he calls her _he_ and _him_. That makes ~~her~~ him cry and at one o’clock, he’s sitting on a chair, Mingyu behind him and hair falling to the floor. He knows his friend is clumsy, but he still trusts him. A weird cut will always be better than the long hair he had a few minutes ago anyway.

         “Thanks,” he says as they watch yet another Marvel movie.

         “No problem. You’re still you, it just makes you more comfortable. I’m glad you told me.” Mingyu puts his head on his shoulder, giggling at how soft Junmei’s (newly short) hair feels against his cheek. “You’re still Junmei?”

         He frowns at that. Of course he’s still himself, Mingyu said it just seconds ago. He doesn’t get why he asks that.

         “Yeah.”

         “No, I mean, the name. Your name, you want to be Junmei?”

         Oh. No, no he doesn’t, but he didn’t really think about that yet. He’d want something else, probably something that sounds like Junmei. He likes how Mingyu calls him Junnie, the nickname being genderless and good for a boy too.

         That’s what he tells his friend. Mingyu stretches to take the apple juice and drinks from the bottle. It’s not like Junmei cares, they’re both used to the lack of awkwardness or reserve between them. They’re more like siblings than best friends, without all the arguing and “no shut up mom said I was her favourite” stuff.

         “Junhui sounds nice.”

         “Cool. I like it.”

         That night, Junmei is now a boy named Junhui and he cries again, hugging Mingyu as if squeezing his best friend could make all of his sadness and negative thoughts go away.

 

Since that movie night, Mingyu brings Junhui some gifts for absolutely no reason.

         The first one is a blue shirt for a brand Junhui doesn’t know anything about except that every boy in his class loves it. When people start saying it’s weird how “she” is wearing boy clothes, Junhui says it’s Mingyu’s shirt and they leave him alone. It’s a fucking shirt, for fuck sake, there’s nothing about it that makes it for boys only.

         The fourth one is a pink hat from the same brand as his shirt. This time, people leave him alone because it’s pink. That’s not the reason why Mingyu bought it, he just knows Junhui likes that colour (and, from what Mingyu tells him, the other colour was way too ugly).

         The seventh gift is a binder so he can hide his boobs and looks like his chest is flat. He accepts the gift with happy tears but leaves it at Mingyu’s house and only wears it there. Mingyu’s parents don’t say anything and he notices how they – even Mingyu’s sister, who never seemed to like him – subtly change the way they talk to him. It’s not a bad change, they just stopped using female pronouns – they don’t use pronouns at all, probably because they don’t know if he’s really a boy or if it’s a misunderstanding – and calls him Jun instead of his full birthname.

 

Eight months later, Junhui has enough clothes to stop wearing the ones his parents gave him. He sells most of his skirts and dresses and gives what’s left to Mingyu, knowing his best friend loves to make plushies and is searching for more fabric to make a new one. Junhui pretends he doesn’t know it’s for him.

         His mother gets mad.

         “Junmei,” she growls as soon as he comes back from his best friend’s house, not noticing (or ignoring) how her child flinches at the name, “you can’t give all your clothes like that.”

         “It’s okay, I sold most of my skirts and dresses, I’ll use the money to buy new things.”

         She tells him the money isn’t a problem.

         “Mingyu is kind enough to let you borrow his clothes, but you should stop bothering him like that.”

         “Mom, Mingyu doesn’t… he bought them for me, they’re mine!”

         His mom looks like he just hit her.

         “Junmei, a girl shouldn’t wear clothes like that! What happened to our princess? Are you okay?”

         No, he’s not okay. He can’t believe someone would get so upset because of some clothes. He doesn’t wear skirts or glitter anymore, so what?

         They fight until he runs up the stairs and slams his door shut before throwing himself at his bed. His brother joins him a few minutes later.

         “They’re just fucking clothes, why are people making such a big deal out of it?” Junhui angrily cries when he asks him – thinking he’s asking _her_ – what’s the problem.

         Tears are rolling down his cheeks, but he doesn’t have the energy to wipe them off and his brother probably didn’t even think about it. God, Junhui wishes Mingyu was with him.

         “You’re the one crying in your room, you’re making a big deal out of it too…”

         His brother couldn’t be more wrong. Junhui isn’t crying because of the clothes. He cries because if some clothes can make her mother so mad, he just knows she’ll react as badly when he’ll tell her how her perfect princess is a boy.

         He’s tired and he can’t sleep to make the tiredness go away. Junhui doesn’t feel at home anymore.

         How could he when his family refuses to see him as Junhui?

 

Junhui is eighteen when he gets too tired. He tells everyone at school he’s trans. Mingyu’s the only one who stays with him. He’s fine. He didn’t really like his other friends anyway, he only sat with them at the cafeteria because he didn’t want to go eat at the library.

         His father hits him. He’s not fine anymore, and his brother comes in his room to take his clothes and everything not girly enough for his parents. They all blame Mingyu.

         What hurts the most is how his mother cries and apologizes for whatever she did wrong to make him this way. He knows they love him and think he’s sick in his head or something, and it makes him want to throw up. There’s nothing wrong with being trans, with being himself.

         That night, he puts things in a bag – things he took back from his brother when he was asleep – and runs away. Not far, only three streets away from the place he used to call home. Mingyu’s parents let him in despite the late hour and his (only) friend’s mother even makes him hot cocoa.

 

Junhui still has a girl body. Once a month, he struggles with things other boys don’t have. He can’t go back to his family so he stays with someone else’s.

         He feels at home in this place.


	2. mingyu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Junmei was Mingyu's best friend.
> 
> (Nothing really changed. Junmei just goes by Junhui now and she's a he. That's all.)

It’s a good thing Mingyu likes to fix things.

Being so clumsy, he broke all of his favourite toys. After getting tired of always buying him new ones and wiping off his tears, his mother showed him how to repair things or make new ones. He absolutely loves it and, if he started breaking some things he didn’t really like just so he could make them better, his parents pretend they don’t know about that.

When he sees a cute girl wearing a pretty dress and a fake smile, he decides he wants to fix her too.

 

Her name is Junmei and they’ve been best friends for exactly two years now. Mingyu remembers the date, he even wrote it in one of his books – the red one, his favourite – but she doesn’t talk about it so he guesses she forgot and doesn’t bring it up.

         Instead, he lets her talk about what she saw on the television the night before. Mingyu already knew that some people were born in the wrong body, but he’s too polite to stop her. Also, Junmei smiles and talks so excitedly, he really can’t stop her and watches the sparkles in her eyes go away.

         “Pink, fairies and unicorns aren’t for girls, they’re for boys too,” he whines when he hears her saying she’s a girl because she likes these things. “I like pink too. I’m not a girl…”

         “Maybe you’re a girl in a boy body.”

         Mingyu is pretty sure “a boy body” is incorrect for some grammar rules, but Junmei is older than him so she probably knows how to use words. Maybe he’s the one in the wrong.

         “No? I don’t think so? I just like pink. It’s just a colour, it doesn’t mean anything…”

         But to his best friend’s parents, it does mean something. He gets stared at for as long as he’s at Junmei’s house when he comes with pink shoes. Junmei’s mother sits him on his lap and sweetly tells him that boys shouldn’t wear pink. He says her parents are the ones who bought his shoes and she looks at him with something weird in her eyes.

         He doesn’t understand it, but later, he’ll know it was pity. He’ll never understand why she was pitying him for having parents like his.

         (He’ll never understand why she can’t raise Junmei the way his parents raise him.)

 

Mingyu is thirteen when he realizes he likes boys as much as girls. He announces it to his family by making a cake with purple, blue and pink icing.

         Honestly, he thinks they were more surprised by the cake than by his coming out.

         His father asks him to be a good boyfriend to his partner no matter the gender, his mother laughs and says that of course he will, they raised him well after all, Minseo jokes about how she’ll suddenly get a crush on a girl just so she can have another coming out cake.

         Mingyu doesn’t forget to tell Junmei about it. She doesn’t care, she loves him (in a friendly, platonic way, dating her would be like dating Minseo and it’s a big yikes), bisexual or not. He can see she’s upset and worrying about something, so he turns the television on and they play Minecraft.

 

For Junmei’s seventeenth birthday and all the days after, she’s a boy. Mingyu is okay with that. He always wanted a big brother.

         He doesn’t have much of a reaction when his friend announces him he’s a boy – he doesn’t have a reaction at all, to be honest – and he’s scared Junhui will misunderstand it. He starts buying him gifts, the kind of gifts he usually give to his other male friends, except that some are pink because Junhui may be a boy, but he’s still Junhui. He’s his best friend, he likes pink, kittens and puppies, he cries when dogs die in movies and he doesn’t even need to try to leave him in the dirt when they play Mario Kart.

         Junhui is still his other half, but something changed, a good change. Now, Junhui feels more comfortable and nothing his friend’s parents said will make Mingyu reconsider his opinion on this.

 

When Mingyu turns seventeen too, he punches his boyfriend and breaks up with him. No one has the right to make fun of Junmei – Junhui – and calls him an attention whore. His friend just wants to be himself.

         For the first time, he lies to his friend (it’s not the first time he ever lied to Junhui, of course not, but it’s the first time it’s one so big). Junhui can probably feel he’s not telling the truth about the reason why they broke up, but he doesn’t insist.

         Mingyu decides – _realizes_ – Junhui doesn’t need to be fixed, the world does.

 

There’s only so much Mingyu can do. He can’t stop Junhui’s friends – they really don’t deserve to be called his friends – from leaving him when he starts asking people to call him Junhui. He can’t stop Junhui from hearing people using the wrong pronouns on purpose. He can’t stop Junhui from having a shitty family.

         But he can stop Junhui’s swirl of negative thoughts.

         When a crying Junhui shows at his door in the middle of the night, Mingyu’s mother makes him some hot cocoa and goes to her son’s room. A few minutes later, Mingyu is on the couch, their mugs still half full – even if they both feel like they should say half empty now – on the kitchen’s table.

Like the first night Junhui spent as Junhui, he takes Mingyu in his arms despite being the one needing the be held and he cries, hugging him like he hugged his teddy bear when they were still kids (innocent and maybe not that happy, but carefree).

Mingyu can’t protect Junhui from the world and he can’t give him the body he should have. All he can give him is a home and someone to goes to when life is too much of a bitch and, when he sees Junhui’s smile – it’s tiny, but it’s there – the next morning, he guesses he’s doing a pretty good job.

**Author's Note:**

> tio,
> 
> we don't talk as much as i'd want to, but i hope you know i appreciate you! maybe not as a friend (for now, since i feel like it'd be weird to consider us closer than just mutuals), but that can change... my dms are always open! i loved your meanie au and i got so excited and proud to see you followed me on twitter (yeah, i'm weird like that) i took a screenshot. i still have it.
> 
> let's hope this year will be good for you! feel free to dm me when you have time, i'd love to be your friend!


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